The Ruling on Seeking Knowledge from Tapes and Books, Then Taking on the Role of Teaching People
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
The questioner also asks: A person has been assigned the job of teaching lessons in creed and jurisprudence, which he learned from tapes and books, but he did not study them under a teacher. He knows, or rather, he is not qualified for this due to his lack of knowledge and religion, and there is no one to take his place. Is it scrupulousness to leave the matter, or is it a sin not to teach?
Answer:
It is not permissible for him to teach as long as he has not learned from qualified teachers. Merely listening to tapes or reading books does not justify him taking up teaching, because one who relies on tapes or merely on reading books may fall into great errors and wrong understanding, and then teach it to people and spread it among them.
Teaching is not to be done except after becoming qualified through knowledge and being grounded in the hands of scholars. There is great danger in teaching, or guidance, or calling to Allah, or delivering sermons, being undertaken by people who have not learned anything of knowledge, but rather rely only on tapes or on reading books. These people are not qualified.
It is feared that they will spread great errors and wrong understandings among people, even if they did not intend them, and their intention was only good. But mere intention and mere will are not sufficient; rather, there must be the scientific qualification by which they distinguish truth from falsehood and error from correctness, so that they may teach people what is good and warn them of what is evil.
The questioner also asks: A person has been assigned the job of teaching lessons in creed and jurisprudence, which he learned from tapes and books, but he did not study them under a teacher. He knows, or rather, he is not qualified for this due to his lack of knowledge and religion, and there is no one to take his place. Is it scrupulousness to leave the matter, or is it a sin not to teach?
Answer:
It is not permissible for him to teach as long as he has not learned from qualified teachers. Merely listening to tapes or reading books does not justify him taking up teaching, because one who relies on tapes or merely on reading books may fall into great errors and wrong understanding, and then teach it to people and spread it among them.
Teaching is not to be done except after becoming qualified through knowledge and being grounded in the hands of scholars. There is great danger in teaching, or guidance, or calling to Allah, or delivering sermons, being undertaken by people who have not learned anything of knowledge, but rather rely only on tapes or on reading books. These people are not qualified.
It is feared that they will spread great errors and wrong understandings among people, even if they did not intend them, and their intention was only good. But mere intention and mere will are not sufficient; rather, there must be the scientific qualification by which they distinguish truth from falsehood and error from correctness, so that they may teach people what is good and warn them of what is evil.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، حكم طلب العلم على الأشرطة والكتب ثم التصدر لتدريس الناس. الشيخ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.